


alone, unknown, sorrowed

by iberiandoctor (jehane), Sir_Bedevere



Series: Tomorrow, At Dawn [2]
Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Barricade Day, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Identity Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 19:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19116589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: June 1832. The barricades have fallen, the blood has been shed, the city is baking in the summer heat, and Richard is going to a funeral.





	alone, unknown, sorrowed

**Author's Note:**

> The Doc and I had such a great time writing Barricade Fic together the last three years that we decided to have another stab at it. This is just a short prologue to get you hooked in, featuring the original characters from our previous fic 'Tomorrow, At Dawn.' The tags will tell you what might be coming up, but they will also be updated. Expect the rating to change too.
> 
> The rest will be coming very soon!
> 
> ~Beds~

_14th June 1832_

He’d missed his dinner almost every evening for a week, and Richard was determined that today he would escape Madame Martin’s wrath, and the bread and cheese that was the punishment for daring to commit such a crime. 

The weather had improved, over the past few days, warming up into what was to be expected of June, and people lingered in the streets on their way home from their work. Richard wove between them and listened to their chatter. It was a remarkable thing that the city, so recently the scene of such horror and pointless bloodshed, had returned so quickly to normal. Aside from his workload, finally decreasing, there was almost nothing to make Richard believe the whole sorry affair had even happened. How soon the revolution came about full circle. 

Richard hurried up the street as the clock on the church began to chime. He was going to make it, and eat a real dinner for the first time since it happened. Sweat beaded on his brow, and he regretted wearing his heavy jacket, but his summer one had been so soaked in sweat the last few days that he’d been compelled to wash it just to be able to abide his own company. Not that his charges at the morgue complained about the smell. 

Piers was sitting on the doorstep sunning himself as Richard leapt up the steps, and he grinned good-naturedly, leaning to the side so that Richard could get past him. 

“Beef tonight,” he said, in his careful French. “You chose a good night to be on time.”

“Anything for Madame’s beef.”

Richard was the first in his seat at the table, and Madame Martin even graced him with a smile for his efforts. He’d forced a comb through his hair and changed his shirt – he didn’t want to give her a reason to dismiss him – and coming back down the stairs, he had passed Henning’s bedroom. The door was open, and Henning was sat at his desk. André was sprawled on the bed, and they were speaking in low voices. Henning was poring over something as they talked, and Richard recognised even from a distance the inflammatory student pamphlet that Henning had brought to him for translation a few weeks before. Why on earth the man still had it, Richard did not know, and why he should be discussing it with André was an even larger mystery. But Richard was hungry, faint almost with it, and he did nothing more than nod at André as he went past the door, and watch them as they came into dinner a few moments after he did. Henning seem distressed, as he had been every time Richard saw him since the barricades had gone up, and André was inscrutable as ever. Whatever they were up to, Richard wanted no part in it. 

The meal passed pleasantly enough. Richard ate voraciously, and Madame allowed him second helpings, a rare treat that surely indicated he had been forgiven for his sins. He suspected that Piers or Monsieur Barnard had spoken for him, explained to her the nature of his work and why he was so busy at this particular time, for she had never been so magnanimous to him before. Still, whatever had happened, he was grateful for it, and when he retired to the sitting room with Henning and André, Richard felt lighter and more well in himself than he had in days. 

They did not bring up the pamphlet, and neither did he, for he’d had enough of the revolution. In the evening sun, with a good dinner in his stomach, the guilt of being living still seemed a little further away.

So it was a mistake to pick up the newspaper, and to peruse it whilst half listening to André’s stories about his day in the corridors of the hospital. Of them all, he never failed to have an anecdote or two that was almost beyond belief – the things people did to themselves, the things they did to one another were a horror and a delight in equal measure. And André was a great storyteller – Henning at least could be counted upon to hang on his every word. 

Henning was in fact laughing, a rare sound – and a pleasant one – when Richard saw the notice in the paper. All of his hard won good humour seemed to drain from him, and he slumped back in his chair as though it had been the only force keeping him upright. 

“What’s the matter with you?” André broke off his story to peer at Richard’s face. “You’re deathly pale. Read a story that doesn’t agree with you?”

“No,” Richard said faintly, reading the notice once more. “I am going to a funeral, it seems.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the same poem as before, Tomorrow At Dawn


End file.
